52 Content Marketing Tips for SEO

Amberly Dressler

Posted on 11.23.2015

Businesses create content for a variety of reasons - one of which is for search engine optimization.

To provide a comprehensive list of content marketing tips for SEO, Website Magazine called upon 52 Web professionals to share their expert opinions of what it takes to get content ranked. While some of the advice may be similar and still others very different, there's something to gain from each of the tips below. Have a look and if you have something to add, please sound off in the comments section at the end of the article.

1. Leverage On-Site Search

"Use your website's own internal search data to see what site visitors already on your website are entering in the site's search box. Use frequent search terms as topic ideas and create optimized content for these terms."

3. Determine Demand

"Create content that people are already searching for. There are lots of
tools to determine search volume and competitiveness for a keyword. The
obvious sweet spot is high volume and low competition and your article can
rank quickly and get results."

4. Keep it Organic

"SEO is known as organic search for a reason. Content should entice readers
organically, not through clickbait or keyword spamming. Make content that
readers want to read and share. Search algorithms are getting smarter, so
don't try to game the system. You may inadvertently blacklist your site if
you do."

5. Create an Outline

"Thematically relevant content is key. Create an outline of your content with the Title Tag being the “primary topic." Heading and sub-heading tags(h1, h2, h3) should be used to further reinforce the Title Tag. The text in between these tags should reinforce both the Title and Heading tags."

6. Meet Query Requirements

"We take exact match keywords from paid search marketing and use those as the basis for content. It is a true signal of what people are looking for in terms of content, since it is their exact search requirement."

8. Be a Resource

"Answer the questions that your product answers. If your company is the solution to a certain problem, then your content
should reflect the fact that you have the solution. Serve as a resource and
help those who are looking for something that you provide. Ask and answer
this question in different ways to make sure you help the most people who
are looking for your solution, find you."

9. Provide a Solution

"Don't be distracted by optimizing an article nobody will read. Focus on the end game - finding a solution to the readers problems. You can optimize until the end of space and time, but begin by capturing the reader's attention with a powerful headline and continuing that engagement throughout the content."

10. Offer Rarity

"The best content for SEO is rare content. That means your content covers an
issue or problem that has not been covered anywhere else and that users are
searching for. Google and Bing need to provide valuable and helpful
responses to search queries for their users so if you can produce niche
content that is unusual, hard to find but is in demand then you'll score
really high in rankings, even over other high-ranking sites that might
touch on the topic but do not do a good job of covering the topic well.

11. Use Tools

"Creating content that ranks well in search is all about keyword research.
Use tools such as the Google AdWords Keyword Planner to research relevant
keywords that have high search volume, then include the keywords throughout
your content in the title, URL and article body."

12. Look to the Past and Future

13. Consider Yoast

"The SEO Yoast Plug-In for WordPress makes optimizing content for keywords,
meta descriptions, readability, and length (title and post) simple. It’s
like having a search engine optimization consultant evaluating your work
and making best practice suggestions before pressing the publish button."

14. Find Inspiration

Use Google Keyword Planner to find a keyword that can be the
subject of a content piece that will naturally lead to conversions. With
creative use of KW Planner, you can often find a phrase that has good
search volume, low competition and flows well for a writer.

16. Insert Images

"Find a void, and fill it with big, beautiful pictures!
If your target audience is searching for how-to, and articles are getting
decent traffic then a bright, easily digestible, infographic will get as
many or more shares, links and traffic.
As people we're drawn to images and it's been that way since the beginning of
time. From hieroglyphics to graffiti to infographics, images get noticed.

17. Plan

"SEO takes time. It's important in content marketing to anticipate and build
content up before its peak period. If Valentine's Day 2016 is coming, start
working on related content two months beforehand, hone it, and build it up as
much as possible before it's officially "launched" with social media.

18. Optimize for Local

"To compete for rankings against the big players in your industry optimize
your content and landing pages for local searches. The competition for big
money keywords like car insurance is stiff, however there is great
opportunity and less competition for Seattle car insurance."

19. Re-Evaluate

"In the beginning it's better to understand that you are always going to evolve content to appeal to different things over time. Only by evaluation and re-evaluation can you improve on existing content to re-engage and capture your audience."

20. Don't Overuse Keywords

"When it comes to writing optimized content:
Place your keywords strategically. Putting keywords in the title and
headings is effective, but be careful not to overuse them in the content
itself. Search engines are good at estimating user experience, and are
likely to view content with too many repetitions of a keyword as spam."

21. Sound Natural

"My number one tip is to not over optimize your content. Yes, you need your target keywords in the content you're writing, but if you have too many instances of the same keyword it can actually damage your rankings. Try to write content that sounds natural to your readers."

22. Just Ask

"Survey your current audience for new content ideas that satisfy a need that they have. It's worth the effort. Then, focus each piece of content around one unique theme or idea, always ensuring that the content includes a compelling title and description metadata."

23. Build Social Signals

"Share new content on all social linking networks (Facebook, Twitter,
Google+, LinkedIn) and social bookmarking sites (StumbleUpon and Digg).
Schedule the content to share again the next day, a week later and a month
later. You’ll gain valuable link juice and see high spikes in referral
traffic from these websites."

24. Aim for the Knowledge Graph

"Search has changed. With long tailed queries becoming the norm, simply looking at what specific questions that users have and addressing that question as the foundation of the content give great results and, if broad enough, a foundation of getting into the knowledge graph."

26. Write Better

"Forget everything you think you know about SEO. Yes, optimize your
images/alt-tags/headers/subheaders with targeted keywords and variations.
But search engines are getting more intelligent. Now they prioritize
quality over quantity, so go deep and write better, longer content that
serves as the definitive piece on the topic."

27. Stay in Your Wheelhouse

"One solid tip for optimizing content to best position it on search engines
is to make it not only relevant to the demographic of the consumers you are
trying to target, but also well within the authority of the company as a
whole. Writing content that is outside the wheelhouse of the company's
expertise does nothing for either the content or the company."

28. Answer Custom Issues

"Each phrase entered on search engines is a query, a question that needs
answering. Creating content to address those questions is a great SEO
strategy to drive targeted traffic that is primed to convert. This is pain
point marketing content,
you answer custom issues with content, before they arrive."

30. Provide Value

"Create content that appeals to people who are just discovering your business for the first time, as well as returning customers. Diverse content creates the impression of authority and helps you better take advantage of secondary and even tertiary keywords. It'll also help convince Google you're providing value, not just going after a single keyword. And here's a bonus tip: Optimize your keywords, but always, always write with your human audience as your top priority."

31. Optimize Everything

"Know your keywords and incorporate them in your content. This includes adding them into the first words of your press release headlines, bylines, boilerplates and blog posts. You can also add keyword-rich scripts to videos and webinars. And ensure images have alt tags with optimized descriptions."

32. Group Content

"Identify key subject areas and the keywords you want to rank for within
them. Group content into physical or virtual 'siloes and only link content
within the same silo, never out. This helps Google understand what your
site’s about and boosts your chances of ranking for your desired search
terms."

33. Discover Priority Levels

"Creating optimized content requires going beyond basic keyword research and
understanding search intent. Using the Keyword Planner to find highly
searched keywords is important, but take it a step further to discover the
type of content search engines prioritize for the particular topic to help
you beat out the competition."

34. Add Interactive Elements

"Google focuses on answering searchers questions with valuable content. Find
a common question your potential clients have and fully answer that
question with a very high quality targeted content piece. Increase the
quality of your content by adding interactive elements like lists, quizzes,
etc."

35. Repurpose Across Channels

"Write longer content on the keyword you want to optimize. Add in
images if you can (infographics are great if you can create them as they
will create more social shares). Then, using the content, create a short
video for YouTube as well as a PowerPoint to put on Slideshare with links
back to your article. This will create more backlinks initially and help
drive traffic.

36. Re-Check Keyword Density

"Always make sure to check your keyword density AFTER you draft your
content on your website. Often keyword density is inaccurate when checking
in a word processor as you might have a navigation, widget or footer etc
that includes your target keyword(s)."

38. Put UGC to Work

"User-generated content (UGC) in the form of ratings and reviews can deliver powerful SEO benefits to your e-commerce site. The language used by reviewers is different than the language used in product descriptions. When you include this unique 'review language' in product detail pages, you create unique content.

Additionally, rankings get a boost from unique terms used in reviews. Search engines understand the language used by reviewers is not the same as the language provided by manufacturers. Search engines use review language to reinforce the topic of the product detail page. As a result, pages might rank better for phrases they already ranked for and they might rank additionally for phrases introduced via reviews."

39. Title with a Keyword

"Target keyword phrases that have high search volume, high
commercial intent and relatively low competition. Then for each keyword
phrase, write compelling content that has those keyword phrases in the page
title and body content, ensuring that it reads well for your readers."

40. Go Long

"Prioritize long-form content (aim for 2,000 words or more), based on a
topic that has reasonable search demand and doesn't have much epic content
already in place. Use a title tag that encourages click through, and build
internal links to that page.

41. Provide Takeaways

"When I create content, I want the reader to be able to take something from
it that they would have not otherwise been able to find. If I can give that
value to the reader, Google and other search engines will recognize that and
my rankings will improve."

42. Be Conversational

"People have become accustomed to querying search engines like they are
talking to a person. I call this the 'Siri effect.' Instead of typing in
keywords, we ask questions and type in full sentences. As a result, content
marketers need to understand not just the keywords and terms that their
audience are using (as opposed to the industry jargon or technical terms
businesses use), but the way they frame their questions, and incorporate
these questions as long tail keywords in the content they create.

43. Take Off Your Expert Hat

"It's easy to lose important intended audience perspective when writing
with extensive knowledge about a subject. Use Google Trends and other
search engine tools to determine what keywords and phrases your intended
audience is using to find related content. You may find substantial
differences in the way you and your audience describe the content."

44. Include a Question in the Title

"SEO success for content marketing assets really boils down to titles. If you name your content based on how you want to brand it, then it will only show in the context of that branding. Do this instead: Make the titles of your content the question that your content answers."

45. Write Freely

"Create a hierarchy structure with H1s, H2s, etc. with optimized titles.
Then, write your content within those headers, and completely ignore how
often you are using keywords. Write freely, and use your keywords when
appropriate."

46. Focus on Readers

"Create contextual content which compliments the user experience (UX) of your website, providing users with solutions, not questions; and moreover, removing any thought or requirement to shoehorn keywords in at a later stage. The key focus should be writing high quality content for users and search engines, not just the search engines."

~Owain Powell, Digital Marketing Manager at Decibel Digital

47. Promote

"To show up on Google you must spend more time promoting content than creating it. Posting and hoping for people to find your content will fail. Reach out to influencers and people in your niche and ask for shares/links. Backlinks are the holy grail of content marketing."

48. Don't Guess

"Spend a significant amount of time researching keywords and target
audience information. Don't assume or guess at what your audience is
searching. Be certain of terms and phrases through proper research. Then
position your content there through SEO and promotion and get those
conversions."

49. Think Sustainable

"Make sure that you spend time digging into what people actually search for.
Whilst volume isn’t important, knowing that you have an audience is crucial to
creating content that can bring in sustained organic traffic. Scale this up with
tools that mimic Google Autosuggest like Infinite Google Suggest and Answer the Public.

50. Earn Referral Traffic

"I'd worry less about search engines and more about getting my content to
easily flow on social media channels and earning referral traffic. Marking
up the content using social schemas, optimizing share buttons and then
listening and participating in the social chatter will produce useful
signals for the search engines while you engage with actual readers!
Quality referral traffic and citations will further improve the value of
what you create when its targeted to the right community. Both of these
signals will win favor with search engines and ultimately earn you more
traffic."

51. Evaluate Page One

"Write your content as a human first – just as you would speak. Then, type
your keywords into Google Search and note the recommended long-tailed
keywords at the bottom of page one. Refine the keywords in your content using
Google’s recommendations to have human-focused search-optimized content."

52. Identify Synonyms

"To attract the highest quality lead prospects from your content marketing campaigns, you need a plan in place that identifies the main keywords for the piece and your brand, and places these within the title, the meta tags and the content copy itself. These keywords also need to appear on each piece of promotional collateral that surrounds the main content (press releases, social media posts, blog posts, etc.). In addition, identify a number of synonyms, or similar phrases, for your keywords and include these in all of the promotional material. If, for example, you produce an accompanying series of blog posts, use these synonyms interchangeably in each post to ensure you get full coverage across the search funnel."